Tag: Fitness

I’ve been putting off this post for 3 weeks now, because I’ve been trying to get to the end of April before my lead is completely eaten way by my husband’s miraculous biological predisposition to fluctuate his weight.

Easter is early this year, and part of me wishes it was deeper into April – I suspect I am going to need a short week somewhere in there. But nonetheless, we are not going to let this full day off work go to waste.

First LightOld Family RecipeGift from my mother-in-law

We all want to capture and keep Spring close

We also went for a run around the sea wall and Stanley Park and I did my first “10K” which is 1/2 walking and running, but the first time I ever did one at all. So, my benchmark is 1 hour and 22 minutes, and I can target improvement each time I try it. And I saw someone I knew sitting on a bench – I know people here! And they saw me “being that girl” running through Stanley Park.

March 29th, 2013 Extra-Ordinary: Sun on my cheeks, clean air to power my lungs, love in my family and chocolate to eat.

Alcohol is poison. It takes a large dose to kill us but nonetheless it is poisonous. It slows your reactions, impairs our judgement, affects our metabolism and pushes our liver to process out the toxins. But yet, we wrap it up in fancy bottles and talk about strawberry undertones and food pairings.

The detrimental effects of processing alcohol on my body was obvious than when I ran Saturday morning. (see how committed we are?) After consuming about 10 ozs of wine on Friday with delicious food pairings, I ate a healthy, low-calorie healthy dinner and went to bed at a reasonable time. We drove to an area of vineyards near Emile’s parent’s house (read: nice and flat) and started out. The flatness of the area had that dessert oasis effect where things seem much closer than they are. I ran and I ran and I ran and when I finally made it to my goal – a cross street – I checked my GPS and found I had run . . . . . 7/10 kms. Huh? This is not possible! And the worse part? The car was now .7 kms away.

I managed to sprint, stumble, and drag myself 3.3 kms, but it wasn’t gazelle-like nor inspiring. Emile, of course, dug deep and managed to get in 5.0 kms. I walked another 1 km and collapsed by the car.

This is how I know alcohol is poison. Because it couldn’t be my will that is weak.

May 12th, 2012 Extra-Ordinary: Visiting 18 Niagara-on-the-Lake wineries today despite the first-hand knowledge of the impacts of alcohol on my body. Food, wine, summer weather, and good company. Who cares what tomorrow brings?

Maintenance May Day 12:
A day with Emile’s parents – a nice break for two extremely hard-working people (Family)
Baked a vegan chocolate cake that the who family could eat (vegan due to allergies) for my sister-in-law’s birthday on Sunday. (Body/Connection)
Did not steal extra Bergamont Cupcakes at the final winery of the day despite an overwhelming desire of the delicious orange frosting and moist interior despite the host’s back being turned. (Soul)

Oh my God. If you have more oxygen moving around your body, you can run further. This may seem elementary to you, and it is elementary to me. But sometimes it just needs proving. My body was like a busy Dim Sum restaurant’s conveyor belt – a bunch of empty plates and little food.

I told you about my iron issue a week or so ago. And for over a week now I have taken 54 mg of iron* with Vitamin C and B12 a day in addition to my usual diet. I hit the track today awaiting my old friend “the stitch” to return about the 1.0 km mark like it usually does. Nope. Not at 1.2. Not at 1.4. A twinge at 1.6. And back again at 1.8. Hmmmm. This is strange. Have I done anything different? No, less sleep than I should have. Less breakfast than I should have. So, I was not set-up for a good run. Yet, for the first time since the Chocolate Race, I was able to run 1.8 km without stopping. I tried the same thing today and found the same result – 2.0 km without stopping. And a little stitch at that point, but nothing too bothersome.

It’s a Miracle! I’m cured! Now if my stupid calves/shins would stop complaining all the time we’d be in business.

May 8th, 2012 Extra-Ordinary: Being able to start to the push to build my endurance to 5 km. Hooray! . . . . . . . . Wait, if I am cured, I have no excuse to stop running. Dammit.

*I will be dropping my intake once I get my levels to normal.

Maintenance May Day 8:
Visited the Trinity United Church to watch a movie about Dr. Burzynski and his fight for his seemingly effective cancer treatment to be accepted by the general medical community. Definitely one side documentary. Definitely where you hang out on Tuesday nights in Huntsville if you are a bit crazy. Definitely one of those nights where you wish your youthful good looks didn’t stand out so much in the blue hair forest. Definitely made us talk on the drive home. Definitely going to the next movie next Tuesday night – after all the crazies are the most fun. (knowledge)

Completed a personality test as a pre-screen for an interview. Hopefully, I have a personality. (career)

Part of the learning I had from the dietician we visited last week was to try to do all of your exercise at one time in the day. Your body starts off by burning carbohydrates, then moves on to burning fat after that. If you do little spurts, you probably will not burn as much fat if you completed it all at a time. This caused my husband – who just last week nodded his head in agreement of my assessment of endurance runners as crazy – to increase his running distance to 10K. But both Saturday and Sunday, he ran 10K (only walking a couple of laps). Now I think he is crazy too.

This lead me to change the way that I do exercise too. Often, I would do two or three bouts of working out in a day as I accomplished other things. Sunday, I completed 66 minutes of cardio/strength training followed directly by a 3K run. This was not fun, but I’ll try it to see if it garners better results for me.

I choose to run on a side road out here near my house. The local tracks are great, but the continuous round and round – I think I am going to tip over sometimes. And I lose count. (How hard is it to count to 12.5 or 25?) No only that – it was a nice spring day out – people were out. When I run with other people around, I don’t want them to see me stop or collapse. So I push myself to go a bit further around the bend until the people are out of sight. It is effective.

I do not trust dogs. Several of you have dogs and you know that I rarely touch them (they smell) and I don’t like to be close to them. I think it is because I could be seriously injured or killed by a dog. I know, I know . .. you will all say to me. . . “Buttons here is so gentle, so well trained”, but the fact remains if Buttons decided to use his teeth and weight to attack me, I would be maimed. My cat often decides to attack me and it is generally futile – he doesn’t have the strength to be able to seriously injure me beyond a deadly case of cat scratch fever. I was assaulted by a Doberman while swimming in Fairy River a couple of years ago. He wanted to play, but in water over my head he was much too strong for me. I was badly scratched on my legs and I was certain I was going to drown. The dog was not on a leash nor was he trained well enough to return to his owner when called. (Please note, I did not engage this dog in any way except being in the same beach area.) That was one of the most terrifying events of my life.

I am not writing this to say that dogs are evil, or dogs should be destroyed, but I do believe that a dog must be trained and kept on a leash (if not at home). For the dog’s safety as well as mine. Bottom line: if my cat wanted to kill me, he’d probably have to sneak into my bed and put arsenic in my mouth. If a dog wanted to kill me, most wouldn’t need arsenic.

So, I am nervous around dogs – big and small (they are all dogs). While I ran down the street, I passed a house where everyone was gathered at the foot of the driveway in lawn chairs. Why do people sit in the front of their property like that? When I ran by, all FOUR of their dogs started chasing me and barking at me. They did not return home when their owners called them. It was frightening, and I burned some more fat by bumping up the pace trying to outrun their territory.

May 6th, 2012 Extra-Ordinary: Running down the street with four tiny little yappy dogs (mini yorkshire terriers?) barking their hearts out at me. I was frightened and felt ridiculous about feeling frightened. Afterall, wearing other clothes I could have been an heiress with my accessory dogs on Rodeo Drive.

Maintenance May Day 6:
Agreed to have my résumé presented to another employer by a recruiter. (Career)

Any opportunity to catalogue my life, efforts and results is interesting to me. To be able to take the chaos of life reduce it to a graph or chart makes me feel good – I have it under control. So, this is bliss for me – I’ve been waiting to write this particular entry for weeks.

It was 5 weeks ago that I decided that I needed to deal with my Shrunken Shorts Syndrome and my husband needed to look at his Ski Jump Shirt diagnosis. We committed ourselves to a month of exercise, healthy restricted calories and a 5K race at the end of it. I’ll admit, we cheated a bit – we started in the last week of March. We did consider having a binge instead, but we thought it would be too hard of a transition – and my pants were already too tight. It became a common sight to see me in workout clothes and weighting out food on our scale.

I had challenges – a bag of marshmallows disappeared quickly at a campfire one night (and even the raw ones on subsequent days). The Kitchener Food Show dessert samples slowed things. Emile faced and won numerous food challenges at work – functions with chef made cookies, pizza and butter tarts. There were days I just wanted to eat macaroni and cheese and be done with it. And sometimes we indulged, other times we held out. And we’re feeling pretty proud of ourselves.

So, if you want to a month of fitness (that will hopefully lead to another), here is my advice:

1. Be obsessive about it – every calorie gets logged, every minute of exercise, and every day you weight yourself (with a digital scale). Plan your days around food and exercise
2. Brag about it – tell everyone you know this is what you are doing, so you have to deal with social shame if you don’t follow through
3. Create an outside force – sign up for a class, a race, or target a wedding, or something to keep you focused for the short-term until your results are motivation enough.
4. Find someone more committed than you are to share the challenge – my husband fit the bill perfectly
5. Compete only with yourself. You’ll always find someone healthy, fitter, eating more wheatgrass, but who cares about them. This is about you!